


A Friendly Face

by clockworkouroboros



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major injuries, One Shot, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 14:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19086526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkouroboros/pseuds/clockworkouroboros
Summary: Narvin and Romana have been ousted from Gallifrey after Romana’s latest attempt at treason and they land...in the middle of a war zone.This is set just after that.





	A Friendly Face

Narvin doesn’t let Romana see his own wounds. She’s hurt, much worse than him, and he can’t let her worry about him. He knows she would. It’s just part of who she is. It’s what made her an admirable president, a decent CIA Coordinator, and a wonderful friend.

He manages to get her out of the blitz and confusion of the battle, past the energy weapons and dalek guns and explosions and the wounded who are doing their very best to regenerate, and he pulls her into their TARDIS, disguised as a large rock. He’s carrying her over his shoulders, trying to ignore the blood trickling down onto his CIA robes, trickling down from her head, her head that’s slumped on his shoulder, unconscious.

He ignores the fact that he’s bleeding, too, and that he can barely walk, let alone carry his fallen friend. He wonders why she doesn’t just regenerate, and then wonders if those weapons on the battlefield block regeneration. Or maybe she’s holding it back, although he can’t see why she wouldn’t want to regenerate. Or maybe her wounds aren’t bad enough to trigger regeneration?

Narvin stumbles through the TARDIS console room, out into one of the many corridors, and the TARDIS kindly moves up the medbay so he doesn’t have to walk quite so far. He manages to deposit Romana onto one of the beds, and then he knows she’s safe, safe from the Time War and the Daleks and the Time Lords. The bed automatically begins to monitor Romana’s life signs and administer medical equipment as she needs it. Narvin wishes he could lay down in one of those beds, wishes he could just lay back and let the medical equipment in the medbay do its work, but he needs to get out of the war zone before anything else happens.

Mantus knew exactly what he was doing when he preprogrammed this TARDIS.

So he turns, gasping slightly at the pain, to go back to the console room, undo everything Mantus programmed into this TARDIS, and go somewhere safe. And then he’s going to need to stand guard, just to be safe. He hasn’t lasted this long in the CIA and in Time Lord politics by being lax in security.

He stumbles out of the medbay, limping, dimly aware of the trail of amber blood he’s leaving. He trusts the TARDIS to clean it up for him. As his adrenaline goes down, he begins to limp more, practically dragging one foot behind him. It was mangled in a trap set for Daleks, and he can already tell that it will never be the same, even after it has healed.

And as he reaches the console room, he collapses. He can’t help but feel annoyed at that. The CIA Deputy Coordinator, reduced to crawling across the floor. He has done his utmost to always maintain proper decorum, and he bites his lip as he hits the floor, trying not to cry out at the pain.

Proper decorum be damned. He lets out a cry of pain, trying to cradle what hurts, but his entire body hurts. He hasn’t hurt this bad in centuries, not since he was on that other Gallifrey, losing his future regenerations.

He tries to pull himself up, and when he can’t do that, forward. He is only moderately successful. He’s aware of the bloody mess he’s leaving all over the floor, but he’s more focused on inching across the floor without screaming. Shining beads of sweat drip down his forehead, spurred on by his efforts. They mix with the blood dripping down from the cut on his cheek.

At last, he has to admit defeat. He slumps to the floor, and begins issuing voice commands, calling for a TARDIS interface. He can feel himself being scanned, and then a holographic image appears, standing in front of him.

Narvin is convinced he’s going mad. “Romana?” he sputters, spitting out amber blood that tastes of copper. “What are you-”

His voice trails off mid-sentence as he makes the connection that she is the image the TARDIS conjured up for this interface.

“No, no,  _ no, _ ” Narvin groans. “Leave me alone.” His body shakes, and he realizes that he’s almost in tears. It’s not something he enjoys, but between tears and grievous bodily harm, he thinks he’d choose the former. Unfortunately, it appears that life has thrown both at him in a matter of microspans.

The image stares ahead, expressionless. She’s wearing her white presidential robes. Is that how Narvin thinks of Romana, still? After all this time?  _ You will always be my president _ , he remembers saying to her once, but that was when she was  _ actually _ president. 

He wants to reach forward and touch her. He wants her to be real, so, so badly. The real Romana is back in the medbay, fighting for her life. She’s full of life and one of the most...most  _ trustworthy _ people Narvin knows. This interface is flat, but it’s not almost dead.

And then he thinks of Leela. 

She would be tending to Romana, not letting anything worse happen to her. Leela wouldn’t be swayed by an interface, she would make some kind of poetic remark about a false Romana, probably.

The image shimmers briefly, and its figure morphs into another person, probably based on his negative reaction. Standing before Narvin, clad in a stony expression and leather skins, is Leela.

For a moment, Narvin’s rational brain stops working, shorted out from the haze of pain and the shock of seeing Leela. For a moment, he thinks it’s actually Leela standing before him. For a moment, he lets out a short, squeaky, “Leela!” For a moment, he’s struck with the sudden urge to grab her, to pull her to the floor next to him and embrace her. He can so clearly see the situation play out in his mind.

But the rational part of his brain kicks back in, dragging the part that kicks in whenever Leela shows up back to rationality, kicking and screaming.

”Leela?” he gasps.

The interface remains cold and lifeless. “I am not Leela,” it says, its artificially generated voice somehow sounding exactly like Leela and yet completely different. It even manages to sound annoyed. “I am the TARDIS voice interface.”

”Yes, I know,” Narvin says. He wishes he could be annoyed, but he’s currently in too much pain for that. He absentmindedly runs a bloody hand over his head, through his short hair. He realizes halfway through that his hand is bloody and brings it down quickly, his face a look of total disgust. “You just look like Leela.”

”I am not Leela,” the interface says again. “I am the TARDIS voice interface. You have activated the TARDIS voice interface.”

”I  _ know _ ,” says Narvin. “I need you to run a systems check and deprogram all preprogrammed flight patterns.”

”You have indicated that all preprogrammed flight patterns should be deprogrammed,” the interface says. Narvin can imagine Leela stumbling over some of those words, her concentration on getting the difficult words right somehow charming and endearing. The interface has no such trouble. “Vocal confirmation is needed.”

“Yes, I confirm that that’s what I want,” Narvin says impatiently, still staring hard at the interface, almost as if he’s willing it to turn into the real Leela.

“Initiating reprogramming process,” the interface replies, and flickers out of view. The TARDIS itself begins to make noises; hums, beeps, little whirring noises.

Finally, the TARDIS calms down, and the interface reappears, still looking like Leela.

Narvin lets out a cry. “Why are you like this?” he shouts, staring up at the impassive interface.

“Query not understood. Please clarify.”

“Why do you look like her?” he cries, his voice getting higher. “Why can’t I just suffer in silence? Why must you  _ torture _ me like this?”

“Scans indicate that you are gravely injured,” the Leela interface agrees. “If you have been tortured, make your way to the medbay.”

“ _ NO _ !” Narvin shouts, surprised by his own intensity. “That’s not what I meant, you  _ stupid _ machine. Just go away. Leave me alone. You’re no help to me, you’re just a façade of the real Leela.”

To his relief, the interface snaps out of existence, and he’s left alone once more. He curls into a ball, acutely aware of the pool of blood that he is now lying in.

”Oh, Leela,” he whispers. “How could I have ever let you go?”

And then he hears the footsteps. They are light, but the TARDIS echoes terribly. He freezes. There’s no way Romana could be up and out of the medbay, and he knows there isn’t another person in the TARDIS.

But the footsteps continue, and it sounds like they’re getting closer. At long last, he sees a figure leaning over him, a familiar figure.

“Leela?” he asks, convinced he’s delirious.

“Narvin?” she says, and it sounds like her, and it smells like her, and her voice is full of concern. “What has happened to you? Why are you not in the medbay?”

He struggles to sit up, but Leela grabs him and, disregarding the bloody mess that he has become, presses him to her in the world’s sweetest embrace. She smells of leather and wood smoke, and Narvin can’t believe it, but it smells like home.

“I need-” he begins, finally, realizing that he still hasn’t piloted the TARDIS away from the war zone. “I need to get up.”

“Shh, shh,” Leela says, cradling his face in her hands. “You will not do anything, Narvin. You are wounded.”

“We’re not  _ safe _ ,” he insists, reluctantly pushing himself away from her. “I need to pilot the TARDIS somewhere else.”

He can see her pondering this, weighing the pros and cons of the situation in that slow, laborious human fashion. Finally, she nods. “I will help you,” she says. “But then I will take you to the medbay, and you will rest. The machines will revive you.”

She takes his arms and pulls him up, letting him rest heavily on her. She moves expertly with his stumbling, letting him find where he needs to be at the console.

After he’s convinced of the safety of the environment in which they’ve landed, he allows Leela to guide him back to the medbay, where she helps him into a bed. He can feel himself being scanned and monitored, and he knows that soon, the operating systems will have seen to his many wounds.

As he begins to doze off at last, he turns to Leela. “You really came back?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.

She just smiles.

  
  


When he wakes, he’s alone. There appear to be fresh bandages around his midsection, and his mangled ankle is set in some kind of cast. Romana is gone from her bed. Perhaps she wasn’t as badly injured as him. Still, there’s no way an operative like Narvin would take any chances.

But as he makes his way around the TARDIS, hobbling along with a crutch, he can find no sign of Leela. She isn’t in any of the main rooms, nor is she appearing on the TARDIS sensor. It’s as if she never existed, save for in his imagination.

He shakes his head. His pain must have been very bad indeed, to make him have such delusions, for such they must have been.

But if she had been only a delusion, who helped him pilot the TARDIS? And who took him to the medbay?

And why do his clothes smell of leather and wood smoke?


End file.
